Search This Blog

Facebook's latest 'improvements'

I do not know whether you know it, but Facebook uncovered some major changes last week during their annual f8 conference. Facebook opened a next chapter of ‘improvements’ this week. A number of complete new apps will allow Facebook users to enter almost everything they do into the social network — where they are, what they do, what book they're reading and what page they're on or what street they just driving through or what you currently eat (how healthy or balanced your diet is) - that is not very new but the way is different and the options to track these information - more graduated, easier to track and to observe.

The biggest modification, at least that's what I'm hearing / noticed so far, is the introduction of the TIMELINE which will replace a user’s profile with a timeline of events from ‘their Facebook history’ (status updates, photos and all the other things said and done). Facebook has extensively worked as a kind of recommendation engine.
Up to now we could see what kind of things our direct friends like or dislike, we could read their ideas and thoughts, where they have been through their pictures and albums and which places our friends were at. The new Facebook will work to make this process even much more observable, obvious and each tiny thing more public.
The ‘heart’ of the new ‘improvements’ is the redesigned profile, which Facebook calls TIMELINE. Each status update, each connection, each ‘like’, each location we check in to support Facebook learn more about you, your network and people around you.
Facebook has now taken all that data and presented it in TIMELINE, which allows users to scroll back through time. Checkout the instructions by Mashable (http://mashable.com/2011/09/22/how-to-facebook-timeline/#27139Youve-Done-It) !
It's important to keep in mind that Facebook isn't showing our friends any information that they couldn't have already seen by scrolling back in our current profile view. A friend who isn't allowed to see your photos or wall posts now won't be able to see them in your forthcoming Timeline.
And it's also important to keep in mind that all those pieces of information are grouped together over the years, it can paint a clearer picture you, our friends and your network.
It's hard to upbraid Facebook at this point, though - These are all information we of our own accord entering and entered into the social network. We always should keep in mind what we freely like to tell others - we should consider very carefully what kind of informations we knowingly and willingly post on Facebook, Linkedin, Google+, Xing or other networks. For those who have posted regrettable things in the past, forgotten about them, and never deleted those posts or comments, you should be worried. It’s now incredibly easy for someone go back on your life and see what you have posted. The good news is that Facebook does allow users to control what is displayed on the Timeline. As users scroll back, posts can be deleted from the Timeline or from Facebook altogether.

And the second big thing is Open Graph.
Another significant change is a new class of Open Graph applications that let users share what they read, watch or listen to. According to Inside Facebook, "These news feed and Ticker stories will feature new “Listened”, “Watched”, and “Read” buttons Advertisers on Facebook’s Ads API or who work with the Direct Sales team will soon have the option to target users who’ve shared through these apps or clicked these buttons, letting them reach consumers of their content that might not have Liked a related Page." (http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/09/22/what-f8-means-for-advertisers-the-ability-to-target-users-based-on-media-consumption/). This feature interacts with each user's homepage that shows real-time updates. With the latest update to Facebook's Open Graph, users who interact with Facebook-integrated services like Spotify, Netflix, and games will now automatically show up in the mini-feed. That means users will no longer have to "like" something for it to appear in this feed. If you are playing a game, reading an article or listening to music it will appear in the mini-feed. I am really not sure whether I should like it ...Will these automatic updates help you become closer to your connections on Facebook? Or will it create issues for employees who read news, articles, play games, watch tubes, presentations, recorded talks or movies or once in a while pastime things at work? Yes as Advertiser I can use these new features – but is this a polite way to know more about my users?

Popular Posts

Most of our
projects are complex and multifaceted or they change emphasis during their
‘life-time’ or both. These products and services are overwhelmed with
expectations, needs, must-haves and nice-to-haves. They also have to cover,
serve, support and take into account many supply channels, communication
channels and communication chains. There are so many users and these users most
often have more than just one responsibility (users often have more than just
one responsibility or role – most people have different roles. For each
individual there will be many roles and each person adopts a different role
depending on the circumstances, see http://boxesandarrows.com/view/ux-design-planning for more). There are many
tools out there used to target and bring light into the ”unknown”. With this
article I’d like to introduce you to one of my favorite tools – the swim…

ART asks and inspires - DESIGN answers and motivates
Asking and inspiring vs answering and motivating is for my point of view the difference of art and design.
And it’s again and again the thing I have to tell upcoming designers or often experienced one. Yes as designer we have the freedom to do many things – to go various ways – but we have a clear aim: “helping people”.

To help someone you have to be understandable and meaningful. Understandability and meaningfulness is possibly the most important issue to be considered while judging the goodness of a design. And if we talk about design I am talking about visual appearance and content.

On the one hand beauty is subjective, and that makes our world so diverse. On the other hand it follows rules which we all learned as we grow up. To design something there are some rules and guidance we have to have in mind and should stick to. Yes for sure you can break rules and often it’s good and useful to do it but you should know what you bre…

I am pretty sure almost everybody had already thought about how cool it might be to walk into a store, taking all the goods you need, and then just leaving the store and making the checkout without having to do any transactions and standing in the line – well Amazon is calling it “just walk out technology” – or better to remember Amazon Go
Amazon Go is coming early 2017 – the location of the first store will be at 2131 7th Ave, Seattle, Washington.

Test users have already testing the store. Amazon is outlining currently the basic details, but I don’t have the full picture and process yet.

Amazon tells it will be fairly simple for the customer. The customer only walk into the store, scans and get recognized by his mobile device. A cart will be created automatically and the customer can collect his goods – that easy.

We all know the ideas of Walmart in the US and Globus and Metro in Germany – they used an actual cart and a scanner. They used either a bar code scanner or RFID scanner. …